Posts tagged ‘Cape Breton’

Friday night I headed east to Pentimento Gallery for one of John’s fantastic every-so-often salons. I love going to them, there’s always a great art show on the walls, and interesting entertainment and people to meet.

Davide Luciano’s Sheep Nation is the current gallery exhibit at Pentimento – models made up as sheep to demonstrate the followers in society. What I really thought was interesting was that he made up the models and wouldn’t let them look in the mirror til it was done – the images are their first reactions to themselves as sheep.

For the rest of the truly marvelous evening – a Cape Breton fiddler, a reading from Victoria Ward’s Little Red Riding Hood Manifesto, a great short film, Prom Storm (as always) by Kirsten Johnson, all held together by Bridgette Gall our host who effortlessly distracted us from tech set ups with impromptu soft shoe routines, and childhood stories about the Lang Sisters, who grew up down the road from her. As children, the Lang Sisters had wonderful advice on how to handle a bully that did not end with violence, but the self-confidence to know you could handle it yourself.

You know those emails you get every so often from a deposed princess in a country that is torn with strife and civil war and her husband or father is held captive and if you’ll just send your bank account number they will give you a share of the millions they will not lose if you help? Most people delete. Kirsten Johnson responds. When you tell someone “I listened to someone read emails out loud on Friday night” you would not expect the shrieks of laughter and applause this correspondence created.

We were also treated to two fifths of a jazz duo, one of whom is heading back to Korea soon.

I have saved the best for last – as did John – the final offering was a chat with Dr. John Nash, who is a research geonomicist (I don’t think that’s a word, but you get the idea). Ending the evening with a science guy was FASCINATING. John says he wanted to have someone where you learn something, and get answers to questions you might have from someone who really knows the answers. We talked about e coli, and germs in animals vs germs in people and believe it or not, it was possibly the best part of the evening.

All in all, it was a wonderful evening, a proper salon and congrats to mein host – I will ALWAYS be back for things like this. Below is a deliberately fuzzy picture of my favourite piece from Sheep Nation – if you look closely, you can see they’re all reading the same latest greatest improve your life detox book that is advertised in the bus shelter. And I LOVE that her nails are did.